What? GroundHog Day AGAIN??!!

It really IS amazing, when I think back to the incense-scented RITUALS that were part of my religious upbringing in the '50's, back when the Mass was still recited in latin. When I think back, everyone was in COSTUME. The priests had their special vestments, the nuns were dressed all in black and even we children were in our uniforms, females required to have our heads COVERED with hats, lace veils or a Kleenex if nothing else. Chanting happened in a language I didn't understand and special objects were waved about. My own rosary beads hung from my belt.

If I ever got THAT carried away with ritual trappings now, I'd be strung up as a PaganWhackoWitch for sure! I really did come away from all that with quite the aversion to the trappings. At best, I eat the first violet blossom I see each year. That's enough of a ritual for me.

I do like the notion of taking the evergreen branches used to decorate around Yule Time and NOW burning them in the fireplace to purify the house. It's funny, how many folks DEFEND the SuperBowl as our modern need for a Mid-Winter RITUAL. If only we could get back to HONORING what warrants HONORING.....the return of the seasons, hopes for the harvest, our connection to what is real, our part in the web of life, we just might all be the saner for it.

I truly do believe that making the SUPERBOWL, with all its battlefield analogies, our only Mid-Winter Ritual to be a desperate mistake. All hail the gentle GroundHog. Sure, it's silly, and becoming stupidly commercialized like everything else, but in there SOMEwhere is that tiniest spark........

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